Reims Cathedral

Turning the champagne bottles

Pre-Christmas Champagne

27 - 29 November 2010

Champagne is fun to drink and a fascinating wine to see being made and being easy to get to makes for a great weekend. Our base for the weekend is a comfortable 3* hotel in the centre of the lively attractive city of Reims.

Our aim is to taste a wide spectrum of Champagnes, to visit a good cross section of Houses, from those that forged Champagne’s reputation such as Taittinger, Pol Roger and Veuve Clicquot as well as to search out quality growers and rising stars in the villages.

You will taste at least 20 champagnes over the course of the weekend, starting at breakfast. You will receive a special welcome and generous tastings at houses that we have been visiting for many years.

Our Pre-Christmas Champagne tour in 2009 coincided with the Reims Christmas Market, a fabulous event with 125 stalls, selling gifts, decorations and traditional food at Place d'Erlon and the Condorcet and Theodore Dubois streets. There are also orchestral and choral concerts and events in the beautiful cathedral. (Dates for the 2010 Christmas market are yet to be confirmed but they are likely to coincide with the tour as it is less than a month away from Christmas)

Your Comparative Tastings

We want to show you as broad a spectrum of Champagnes over the weekend as possible. So, as always on Arblaster & Clarke Champagne weekends, your Wine Guide will show you a selection of Champagnes in order to introduce the various styles and different Houses or Growers in two tastings, one each evening. No two of our tastings are alike and no two Wine Guides have the same approach to presenting them. We like to choose some unusual Champagnes for you to taste not just the famous names. Most will be to your liking though perhaps some may not. You can normally learn more from these than those you liked, but hopefully you'll find one or two that you think are fabulous!

Evening Meals

Reims has a wealth of wonderful restaurants, brasseries and bistros from two Michelin double rossette restaurants (early booking essential!) to more reasonably priced gourmet restaurants and traditional style brasseries. We provide a list of all our tried and tested ones before the trip with phone numbers, so you can book ahead if you wish. However, we will make a reservation at two of our favourite (reasonably priced) brasseries and you are very welcome to join our wine guide or tour manager for dinner where they will select some interesting wines.

This again is one of the great advantages of an Arblaster & Clarke fully escorted tour, we give you the flexibility to dine alone if this is what your prefer, or the fun of being part of a lively party who generally all get on together really well, especially after the champagne tasting has broken the ice! This is especially appreciated by those clients who travel alone with us.

Champagne Breakfasts

Breakfast is served each morning at the hotel on the top floor, from where there is a superb view over the town and out towards the cathedral. The A&C tour manager is on hand to exclusively serve our clients with a glass of champagne to go with their buffet breakfast - morning's will never seem the same again!

Visit to Champagne House

Our morning visit is still being arranged, so watch this space! Generally a mixture of good grower Champagne houses and larger houses are included in our tours - we try to make sure that you are given the broadest possible introduction so that you can see the complexity of the different scales of Champagne production.

Your Free Time for Lunch in Reims

Lunchtime is free in Reims. You will have time to explore Reims and choose a cafe table to sit at and people watch while you enjoy some local food and a glass of champagne, perhaps!

Our afternoon visit departs mid afternoon and of course if you decide you would rather linger over your lunch, explore Reims further, or simply rest, you can of course choose to miss the visit and meet up with again later for dinner if you prefer.

Camille Savès

Camille Savés, is a small “grower-producer” in the Grand Cru Village of Bouzy whose wines we have been enjoying for many many years. We will taste Champagnes which show well the characteristic power of Bouzy Grand Cru wines. They have great weight and richness of flavour with a powerful, bready Pinot bouquet and high alcoholic content. Savés also produce the famous Bouzy rouge red wine, which we will be able to taste. They are one of the best grower-producers in the village. We first discovered Camille Saves 20 years ago and have always been huge fans of these powerful champagnes - and now Robert Parker has finally discovered them, and awarded their Rosé, 97 Parker points!

Billecart Salmon

The Billecart family has lived in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ since the 16th century. A small, family-owned house that always produces high-quality Champagnes of great finesse. Billecart-Salmon is particularly renowned for the delicate style of its rosé - the essence of their style has always been its meticulous production, from the double "débourbage" to its long, slow, very cool fermentation. We have watched them rise to super-star status since we first started visiting them in the late 1980s.

Lunch at André Jacquart

André Jacquart owns ten hectares in the Grand Cru village of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger and a further eight in the Marne Valley and the Aube making them an important grower in Champagne. Their Chardonnay Champagne is incredibly rich and their non-vintage is well aged. They also own Château Cantegrive in Bordeaux so you will also get the opportunity to taste some of their Bordeaux wines.

Our visit here includes a buffet lunch, with the full range of the house champagnes to enjoy with your meal. This is not a restaurant but a private invitation to lunch as guests of the family.

After the visit we continue our journey directly back to Calais on on to Dover and London arriving late evening.